Go Home
by VerelLupin
Summary: Dominic was trapped but Ariadne got him out. He has his wife and kids. She has Arthur and her dream job. They have everything, so why do their eyes meet when they aren't alone? Can you go home if your home is not where its supposed to be? D/M A/A but D/A.


**Remember that second songfic, I was talking about. Well here it is. I had debated with myself whether or not to post it but I couldn't resist adding to the Dom/Ari category. There just isn't enough of them.  
**

**There is adult content, so heads up. (I suck at lemons, even semi-lemons)**

**I will be updating Free Falling this weekend. I accidentally erased the next chapter on my laptop and I had to start from scratch, it's been a pain.**

**Anyhoo this is AU. It follows the theory that he was really trapped and Mal wasn't, so she is alive and well.**

**Hope you enjoy...**

**The song is called Go Home, by Dessa.**

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* * *

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"What if somebody sees us?"

"They won't."

**It's too dark.**

"Nobody else is in the building?"

"It's just us."

**Just the passing cars**

"Are you sure?" she asks.

"Yeah, the guys are out celebrating."

**Illuminate the room.**

"Dom, we shouldn't."

"I know. This will be the last time."

"Will it?

"Won't it?"

"Then what?"

He stopped kissing her neck and sighed, "I go home."

**And it's harder every time I see you.**

"So, now that we have this layer built, we should take a break and start fresh tomorrow."

They all nod and both her and the team leader pretend they aren't counting down the time until they are all alone in the warehouse. She leaves behind her sketchbook and he dallies talking to Miles on the phone.

"We have a few hours," she whispers and straddles him as soon as Miles hangs up.

"We should-"

"Hurry, Dom. Just hurry."

**And then when you leave.**

"I love you," he strokes her hair and she burrows further into his arms.

"I do too." she replies and lifts herself off him.

He gets dressed and all she can do is watch him walk away. She doesn't move from their spot for a good hour. She wants to absorb his scent. She wants to be near him always.

**I'm wondering when would be too soon.**

Arthur tells her they are invited to Mal's birthday party the next day. She tells him she doesn't want to go, that she is too tired.

Arthur tells her that it will be at the Cobb household and they have a guest room open to them, so if she doesn't feel good…

She agrees and he goes straight after work and she goes but not before stopping at the store. "Hi, Mal." She greets and hands over the bottle of champagne that Mal so adores.

It quells the guilt for a few moments.

"My favorite!" The french woman exclaims.

"So are you having a good birthday so far?" she asks but her eyes are searching for the woman's husband, anything to catch a glimpse of that cornflower hair.

"Arthur is in the living room, Ari." Mal says and invites the younger woman in. Ariadne smiles knowingly as if they are sharing a joke. Dom rounds the corner and her smile is plastered to her face as she spots Arthur and quickly plants a kiss on his cheek.

He turns toward her and brushes her lips with his.

**But you ain't mine to miss**

She doesn't miss Dom's clenched jaw or the way he is suddenly caressing his wife's lovely back. Mal is perfect and porcelain in her swimsuit, a stylish and ridiculously fashionable thing that Ariadne would never dare wear.

She notices the possessive gleam in his eyes is directed at her body and it makes her burn.

**And it's time we put a line down in the dust. **

"I'm not yours."

She says it to him but only after he has her pinned against the sink in the guest bathroom. After he harshly yanks at the material of her modest swimsuit and makes the faucet dig into her back from the force of his thrusts.

"If they find out," she gasps.

"They won't." he pants and reaches between them rubbing at her heated flesh until she lets the tears of release fall from her eyes. "Don't cry, sweetheart."

"This is wrong." She says but her desire for him outweighs her morality and she refuses to put the distance between them than there should be.

"No, Ari. It could never be wrong between you and me."

**I know what friendship is and it sure doesn't feel like us**

He licks the blood off of her lip afterward. The lip she bit while trying to keep the screams silent and to keep her nails from raking his back. Mal would notice that.

"You aren't his." He replies and she can't snap that she is because he's embedded so far into her emotionally, mentally and physically that she doesn't know where she ends and he begins.

"But you're not mine."

He doesn't correct her. He can't be.

**Go home to her, while you still can.**

"Have you seen Dom, I can't seem to find him anywhere." Mal asks someone on the other side of the door.

His wife tries the doorknob and they hold their breath.

"Dom, honey?" she knocks.

Dom answers that he'll be right out; Mal asks if he's okay. He mentions that he must have had something that didn't agree with him and this time he feels the tears sliding down Ariadne's face and onto his skin.

She hugs him a little tighter and he whispers that it will be ok. One more layer of lies to add to the pile that is pulling them under.

Five minutes later she slips out and sits in the hot tub as if she was there the whole time. She sits until the water feels like it's burning her up and she hopes that it destroys the evidence of what she has just done.

**It's much too late now for drafting up new plans.**

She finds out that they are leaving L.A. to move permanently to Paris a few days later after another round of lovemaking. She hisses at him that he knew all along and was just trying to get one last lay.

He pulls her angry and screaming form away from the door and tells her that she is holding his heart and no distance can change that.

She can't seem to stop kissing him and they spend their last night together just holding each other and wishing that they were going home to one another.

**Your woman's got an honest man, I always thought.**

She doesn't hear any news about him or from him in four months. She won't transfer back to Paris. She already made the move for him once when she came to L.A.

She won't chase him across the world.

**So don't do nothing now to make me take it back **

"Did you hear that Mal is pregnant?" Arthur asks.

Ariadne only shakes her head numbly. Arthur is pleasantly surprised by the ferocity in their lovemaking and he falls asleep with a smile on his face. She stays awake the whole night.

He wakes and gazes at her lovingly. She closes his eyes with her fingertips because all she can imagine is a cerulean shade. And she doesn't want to scare him with her crying. He takes her gesture as a sweet one and he brings her breakfast in bed.

She tells him she doesn't deserve him. He grins and agrees.

**We'll I'm sure that you've seen a girl go flush before.**

He calls her up at three in the morning. She hangs up. He calls again.

He shows up at her apartment two hours later, when Arthur is sure to be at the office, with red-rimmed eyes and tells her that Mal lost the baby. She gathers him into her arms and his eyes clear up like the sky after the rain.

She finishes school and returns to Paris. Mal is happy to see her back in their lives, as are the kids. They all go out dancing to commemorate her official role as Architect in shared dreaming.

Dom asks Mal if she minds if he takes the new graduate for a spin around the floor. Ariadne insists it isn't necessary but Mal waves them off and when they are out of hearing distance he tells her. "You look beautiful, so beautiful that I don't want him anywhere near you. I want to be the only one."

**But I don't want to be touched**

She wears a dress that Mal helped her buy, a dress that Cobb compliments as soon as he pulls her away from the crowded fundraiser. A dress he will try to take off later, when he offers to drive her home. One she will let him take.

**I don't want to be moved, I don't want to think much.**

She blushes and tries to pretend that she can't feel his hand caressing the side of her breast through her dress. Eames eyes them suspiciously and she abruptly ends the dance, killing any chance of a rendezvous later on.

**I just want to get through with my hands in my pockets**

She fights her way through the crush and away from him. Eames confronts her. She can't lie to the liar. He reminds her that Cobb is a family man. She tells him that she can stop anytime.

**While we can let's just stop**

Eames hugs her, "I'm sorry kiddo but you're good and hooked."

She clings to him and tells him that she's scared of what could happen if 'they' were to find out. Arthur and Cobb find them this way and an argument ensues.

Eames takes it from Arthur because he knows that the truth, that is so obvious to him, would tear them all apart. Cobb is grateful that he is a great poker player.

Arthur notices the distance between him and Ariadne but he missed the mark on the culprit. He tells her that he doesn't want her anywhere near Eames. Dom hauls him out of the ballroom before he can say anything truly damaging and calms him down.

Mal takes Ariadne to her home. The home she shares with Dominic.

**Already have my own problems.**

He sneaks down to her while Mal is asleep. He wants to stop, he has to stop but she is addictive. It's like the rush of a kick or the uncertainty of limbo. She is everything that Mal used to be and has stopped wanting to be.

She's everything he didn't know he needed.

He sits down on the couch and pulls her onto his lap. She tells him that she is late.

**I'm not trying to get sainted.**

His heart drops into his stomach then climbs into his throat. She tells him that she'll take care of it and he makes her swear that she won't.

**I don't need to be good.**

She tells him that it's over and that she is breaking it off with Arthur. She doesn't want to toy with him, he deserves better than her fractured heart.

**I'm just trying to stay blameless.**

"What about us?" he asks but she just crawls off his lap.

"There is no us. There's just you and your wife and me and soon to be ex-Arthur. Go back to her and leave me alone."

**Go home to her, while you still can**

He gets up but when he gets to his room all he can see is a small child with her brown eyes and his golden hair.

He sobs quietly in the hallway because it isn't Mal's fault or Ariadne's. It's his for falling for her but its going to be the both of them that get hurt.

**It's much too late now, for drafting up new plans**

He knows she left early in the morning.

Mal asks him if she was having problems with Arthur. He says it's their business.

Six months later he knows that she broke up with Arthur. He knows because Arthur confronts him and he doesn't deny it.

"You were sleeping with her the whole time, weren't you? You let Eames take the fall but it was you all along. How long before us? What is it during us? Are you still?"

"No, it was before you and it was never meant to be-"

"Meant to be what?" It wasn't meant to be an affair? What did you think it would be? You're married and she was single. That is the very definition of an affair, Cobb."

He paces back and forth becoming more and more agitated as he talked. "It was just sharing ideas at first and then Mal was so distant for so long. She was so angry that I had not believed her, that I had thought her crazy. Ari, got me through that."

"She wasn't yours to have, damm you Dominic! Did you think about me or Mal? Did you think about what this would do to our friendship? What it would do to Ariadne?"

He had no answers and Arthur left right after not wanting to hear any.

He was forced to look for a new point man the next day. He didn't have to explain it to Eames. The forger had already figured it out.

He lost a forger that same day.

Two months later she transferred to the Langley Division of Dream share. She wrote him that it was a false alarm and that she hopes he is happy.

Now he was out an Architect as well.

**Your woman's got an honest man, I've always thought.**

He writes back that he is. He doesn't tell her that Mal hasn't been the same long before her. Since he came back from the Fischer Jr. con. Since she proved him wrong about her reality.

"Why did Arthur leave?" she asks.

"He wanted to start his own team."

They sleep in separate beds that night and he moves to the guest room the next night.

**So don't do nothing now, to make me take it back. **

He visits her once more because if he is to live without her for the rest of his days then he wants something to remember her by.

They have dinner and share a few drinks. Nothing to make them do anything rash but they'll use it as an excuse anyway.

**I've seen our better natures flashing like a pair of flipping coins.**

They go back to her government provided apartment.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

He tells her that he will leave if she wants him too.

"I'm not but I don't know how to stay away from you."

She pulls a coin from her pocket. "Heads you stay. Tails you leave."

He takes the coin and flips it. It hits the floor and spins and spins and spins. On the fifth spin it lands perfectly balanced on its edge. She pushes him into the darkened room anyway.

**And I know its getting late cause I can see exactly what's been running through your mind. **

They take their time in undressing each other. He wants it to never end. He tortures her with excruciatingly slow kisses that reach from her toes to the top of her head. His hands span her hips and she raises them in welcome.

Rough hands caress breasts that are heavier than he remembers but then he always only palmed them. This time he holds them like it will be the last time.

**I don't pretend it's easy I like it less than you.**

Fingertips grace his ribcage and tap dance their way down his navel until he swears he'll just expire on the spot if she doesn't touch him the way she has before. Her knees are steadier in their rocking rhythm.

Their desire is heavier in the room, it not its usual frenzied coupling. This is different, this is a good-bye of sorts.

Her hair curtains them from the world and for a moment it's only them in it.

**It's been a long time lonely, I've got less to lose.**

This is the first time they talk of their obstacles. The reason, which makes them so magnetized to each other, is never discussed. They already know what it is.

Instead it becomes a night of firsts.

The first time he is allowed to mark her with his whiskers. The first time she doesn't stop him from sucking the pale skin and spreading the rosiness all over the surface of her body. The first time she grips his shoulders without a shirt on, without fear of making a scratch.

It's the first time he fully lets go and spills himself inside her. It's the first time they've done this without any protection. The first time she won't take the morning after pill.

**But here's a chance to do right **

"Do you love me?" he asks.

"You know I do."

"Then why are you sending me away?" he holds her body tightly hoping that through contact alone, he'll convince her to let him stay here with her forever.

"Because it's the right thing to do."

**This is the stuff of real life.**

He leaves her in the morning and she carries the burden of having once more been the other woman and not stopping it, of stealing a piece of him to keep with her always.

**Let's just let this one slide, say our good byes.**

He's going back to his empty life and she is being left alone in Virginia but this was what she asked him to do. This was the price for having one last night with her.

**Go home to her while you still can.**

So he boards the plane to France to a wife that is no longer a lover and away from a lover who is not his wife.

It only comforts her that Mal never knew.

He didn't tell her that Mal has suspected for a while. He couldn't do that to her, that guilt was his alone.

**It's much too late now for drafting up new plans**

It doesn't take too long for the rest of his life to unfurl. "How long have you been screwing her, Dominic?" Mal snarls.

"It wasn't like that," Dom said.

"What was it like then? Tell me. Did you imagine you were only sleeping with her? What did you justify it with to be able to look at me every day? What did you pretend you were doing when you stabbed your best friend in the back?" she shouted.

**Your woman's got an honest man, I always thought.**

"It was just sex at first and it wasn't hard to pretend that's all it was. Then I fell in love with her, I was wrong. I should have never betrayed you and Arthur that way."

She slapped him hard. "Liar!" She slapped him. "Liar!" over. "Liar!" and over until her hand was red and hurting. "Liar!" Until his face had begun to bruise. "Liar!" Until she was crying just as hard as he was.

**So don't do nothing now. **

"I didn't mean for it to happen. She never meant for it to happen. She loved you as much as me, it tore her-"

"Don't tell me what she felt. Don't tell me it hurt her. Not when she came into my home and fucked my husband under my very nose. Not when she played with my children after having done things with their father that no real friend to their mother would have done."

"Mal, it was my fault."

"No, it was mine. I gave her to you." Mal yanked the ring from her hand and tossed it across the room. "I sent her to recover you and bring you back to me, you loved me so much. I never thought that she would…"

She swallowed and the harsh truth broke through, "she did too good a job. She saved you from your delusion of my death but she took what belonged to me. I let her take you. I let her have you. I didn't want to get lost again so I risked you instead."

She laughed and sat on the ground, "I lost you."

**To make me take it back.**

"I'm sorry Mal. I never meant to do this. I never meant to hurt you."

"But you did. I made the mistake of believing you would love me forever and you would have if I had not pulled away, if I had not liked her."

They stood at opposite sides of the room and she sighed in defeat. She was french to the core and the French understood that love was the ultimate war.

"Dominic, I want a divorce."

"Mal-"

"You're free Dom. I can't keep you here. You're not the person I married any more and I'm not the woman you saw in your dreams. I will not force you to stay."

She was a gracious loser, that's what she was.

**Darling **

"Ariadne," Lt. Horace Preston waved her over from her diagrams.

"Yes, sir." She said and left her drawing tablet propped up on her coffee mug. The one that said, "World's Coolest Mom."

"I want you to meet the new Architect."

"Another one, sir?"

"This project requires more than one. The military needs ways to keep the most private information private, especially from torture tactics. He is an Architect and Extractor as well. I trust you can keep the nature of his work and skills with us classified."

Ariadne nodded glad to not be alone and have someone else to share the anxiety with. "Hello," she said and stuck out her hand same as before.

"Dominic Cobb, meet Ariadne Mace." Horace said introducing the tall blond man to the short brunette woman.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cobb."

She never meant to break up his life. **'What did you give up?'**

"A pleasure to meet you, Ariadne."

He never meant to drag her down with him. **'****Will you let me stay?'**

**Go Home**

"Can I take you out for coffee?" he asks

"I can't I have to get home."

"I'll walk you."

"Cobb, there's something I have to tell you."

"Please, call me Dominic." He replies.

She takes him home. She takes him to see the little girl with brown eyes and golden hair.

The child is exactly as he'd picture on that long ago night.

"You can stay, Dominic." She says.

"Thank you." He replies.

Neither could have foreseen the strange turn of events that brought them together. Neither had expected she would be the one he would come home to.


End file.
